


The Fifth Sun

by Guede



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Beach Sex, Betrayal, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Faustian Bargain, Flirting, Hallucinations, Infertility, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Marriage, Menstruation, Mental Instability, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Aztec Religion & Lore, Rough Sex, Self-Sacrifice, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Will keeps the coin with devastating consequences for nearly everyone. The gods behind the curse take a more active interest in events.
Relationships: Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner, Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow/Will Turner, James Norrington/Elizabeth Swann, James Norrington/Will Turner
Kudos: 19





	1. Smoke and Steel (Tezcatlipoca)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2005.

He woke to small fingers fumbling about his chest. They touched the coin and Will’s eyes flew open; his hand snatched over his talisman and he tried to scoot away from the thief. But his head was still swimming from the hard blow it’d been dealt and so he could protest effectively only with his voice. “Leave that alone!”

Brown eyes framed by deep gold curls blinked shock at him. “I only wanted to—”

She was beautiful. She was an angel. She’d saved him, Will thought. But she couldn’t take his coin. “It’s mine. My father gave it to me and it’s all I have left of him. Please leave it alone.”

“All right,” she agreed, eyes shining. The girl glanced over her shoulder, then turned back and frantically shoved Will’s hand so the coin was hidden again. “But you can’t let them see it. They’ll think you’re a pirate, and they hunt pirates.”

“I’m _not_ a pirate. I’m Will Turner and I hate them. They killed my father.” The vehemence in his voice seemed to frighten her, but only for a moment.

She stuck out her hand. “I am Elizabeth Swann. And this will be our secret.” Instead of shaking his hand, she gripped it in an odd way, as if she wanted to wrestle, and pulled it to her chest. “Swear on my heart.”

“And mine,” Will whispered.

“Elizabeth?” A man came over. He looked old, at least twenty, and he walked with a brisk, stiff stride that reminded Will of the creditors that had hounded his mother’s sickbed. But when Will shrank back, the man essayed a smile at him. It was still stiff, but it was not as hungry and greedy as the creditors’ ones had been. “I see you two have made friends. Good. Elizabeth, your father’s having you sent below. You can…see to the boy’s wounds.”

He almost bowed, but caught himself and made a very precise turn to go back to the rail. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially at Will. “That is Lieutenant Norrington. He never likes for people to enjoy themselves. Come, you must be hungry.”

Will stood and only then realized he had still been gripping the coin. His hand was wet and sticky with something that he desperately refused to think on, and so when he let go, his fingers stuck to the coin. At least, that was what he told himself.

* * *

When Will turned twelve, Governor Swann led him out of the servants’ quarters at the mansion and down into town, where Will was given over to Mr. Brown the blacksmith as an apprentice. Back then, Mrs. Brown had not yet run off with a sailor from Madrid, and so Mr. Brown was still a good-natured, capable man, if a bit fond of ale after dinner.

He set Will to simple drudgery for the first few years, such as managing the donkey and cleaning out the forge’s ashes and hauling water. At fifteen, Will’s muscles had strengthened and swelled to the point that Mr. Brown put a hammer in his one hand, a chunk of iron in the other, and started teaching him the trade.

At sixteen, Will was heating what was to be a hoe-blade when he leaned too far over. He felt the coin, strung on a thong and always carefully tucked beneath his shirt, slip loose, and he thoughtlessly snatched for it. The flames leaped and scorched his skin and shirt and hand, sending him flailing backward for the waterbucket. Its coolness quickly put out his clothing and soothed his burned skin—all but for his hand, which was clutched around the coin.

The coin was throbbing. Will’s blood ran cold, colder than the half-remembered icy spray of the sea in England. He gasped and the air was hot, smoky, suffocating. Palpable. Squeezing and groaning and beating to the deep drums of the darkness…

…he woke up when Mr. Brown tripped over him. At first Will was fearful, for the man could have a scarifying tongue, but to his surprise, Mr. Brown didn’t even seem to notice. He groped his way over Will and stumbled on, mumbling curses on the heads of the Spanish.

Will blinked and for a second, he saw superimposed on the drunken stagger of his master the sensual sway of another couple. But then it was gone.

* * *

The silver tip came at Will and he panicked, flailing wildly with his sword only to feel something icy tap his chin. He flushed and calmed down, but didn’t dare glance up.

“William. Look at me.” Fingers tipped up his chin. Panting a bit, Norrington stood in shirtsleeves, his hair straggling out of his queue. When he saw that Will was watching, he stepped back and took up the stance they had been practicing. “You put your leg too far forward.” Demonstration. “Next time, move it this far and no more.”

“All right,” Will quavered. His arms ached and he was tired of being stupidly scared.

Norrington frowned as if he knew every thought Will was thinking. But to Will’s surprise, what Norrington did was not cuff him on the side like Mr. Brown would, but to take him by the shoulders and look him in the eye. “William, why did you ask me to teach you how to fight?”

“So…so I would never suffer pirates again. I’m sorry. I saw the tip coming and I was frightened—”

“Of course you were frightened. You thought I was going to hurt you. Which I would never do, but…if you’re to learn this properly, you’ll have to feel that fear. Only remember that you can always strike back at it.” The fingers on Will’s shoulders squeezed reassurance into him. Then Norrington straightened and lifted his sword. “Now, do you still want to learn?”

Will nodded and raised his blade.

* * *

“Is he gone?” Elizabeth hissed. Her hair was tumbling loose from the tail in which she’d bound it back and it counteracted the effect of her clothing: Will’s one spare set of everyday wear. She was a chimerical thing, too revealingly hugged in some places and too loose in others.

Will couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Somewhere inside, someone was laughing at his presumption, but he nevertheless couldn’t.

Eyes rolling, Elizabeth elbowed him hard. “Will?”

He came back to himself, and to the officers standing just a few yards beyond the wall over which he was peeking. “Shhh! They might hear you! Norrington’s already wanting to stop giving me lessons, and if he finds out I’ve been passing them on to you…quiet. Quiet. They’re coming this way.”

Elizabeth bit her lip and disappeared from view, but not from touch. She remained pressed against Will’s leg, one hand unconsciously squeezing his ankle. As the men’s footsteps neared, her grip grew so tight as to be painful, but he didn’t dare signal to her.

Norrington had advanced quickly since his arrival in Port Royal. Now his uniforms were bedecked in gold braid and his cuffs frothed with lace. He had taken to wearing the powdered wig, which often became disarrayed during their sparring matches and which completed the image of a man armored for success. Will hated the new clothes. They hid the man he’d met five years ago and replaced him with something doll-like. Rigid. If Will didn’t want the lessons in fighting so badly, he would have left Norrington to his high society and retreated to the forge, where his tools never changed and Mr. Brown never tried to tell Will what to do anymore.

_I could teach you better._

The jerk Will made knocked a pebble from the top of the wall, which bounced to the street below. Elizabeth’s fingers snapped so hard around his ankle that he thought it would break.

In the street, the conversation between Norrington and his fellow officer—Gillette?—slowed and drifted from a discussion of careening. Gillette made some comment about pesky tropical rodents, to which Norrington hmm’ed while gazing at the top of the wall. His eyes suddenly met Will’s—they frowned, but much to Will’s relief, Norrington apparently dismissed it as nothing worth his notice. The two men continued on.

“What was that?” Elizabeth hissed, once Will had climbed down. “You almost gave us away!”

“Nothing. I had a cramp.” He brushed off her and retrieved the sticks they had been using, offering her the straighter one. “We’ve got to hurry if you want to learn this last stance today.”

What he would have liked to do was to sit down and talk with her, to stare at her hair, but Elizabeth came impatient to learn everything that she wasn’t allowed to and she would not have agreed to it. When she did talk, it was of wild pirate fancies that always drew up memories of fire and screams and death. So Will made do with what he had. If it made her smile, it was enough for him.

* * *

When Will was seventeen, Norrington came to the field where they practiced still in full uniform. He had his hands clasped behind his back and his face was encased in solemnity. “William, I think it would be best if we stopped having these lessons. My duties are taking up an increasing amount of time, and I can’t neglect them. I truly do regret this decision, but you’ve learned about all I have to teach, and I’m certain that you can do well on your own now.”

“I understand,” Will said. And he did. Perhaps his hand, which was curled so the nails dug into the coin-shaped scar, didn’t, but then, it was remembering the wrong man.

Norrington seemed surprised, and the shield over his eyes began to lower. He started to say something.

“I need to go. I have orders to fill.” Whatever Norrington had to say would have only made it worse, so Will excused himself before that could happen. It was the least he could do, he supposed. After all, Norrington had taught him a good deal in the first place, and for no compensation.

But nevertheless, Will’s hand ached far into the night.

* * *

Two days later, Will was high in the rafters of the forge patching the roof when his hand slipped and he fell. His neck snapped. He died.

* * *

When Will came back to life, his head was aching and dizzy but his limbs were leaden. He slowly turned his head and saw that the coin had slipped from beneath his shirt to lie beside his ear. It was too close for his eyes to see it properly so the shape of it blurred and distorted, but its heavy gleam was unmistakable.

His legs still worked, he was surprised to see. So did his hands, and they were curiously lacking in the shake he thought they ought to have. With his too-steady hands he almost poured himself a drop from Mr. Brown’s carelessly left-behind bottle, but at the last moment Will caught himself.

It’d been a bad fall, he told himself. He had knocked himself out, but he was clearly all right. No need to go to pieces just because of a fall.

After a moment of trepidation, he climbed back into the rafters. Will spent more time nervously checking his balance than he did paying attention to the roof planking, but eventually he finished and got his feet back on the solid ground. Then he went back to filling the day’s orders. Once in a while, he rubbed his scarred palm against his leg or the anvil; it itched from time to time, but he supposed he should be glad he hadn’t had his fingers crippled.

The coin warmed with the heat of his body and almost seemed to burn his chest as it had his hand.

* * *

Will dreamed often, and he was no stranger to nightmares. But his dream that night was black and brutal and _old_. He almost didn’t remember who he was when he woke, twisted in the sweat-sodden sheets and gasping. His feet were still kicking in a vain attempt to flee a phantom.

* * *

He dreamed again, and again, and again, and soon he was sleeping so little that he started to see his dreams in daylight. Then he started to hide. It was easier than he thought, as Mr. Brown was too busy seeing the world from the inside of a rum flask—that is, not seeing it at all—to notice his apprentice slaving red-eyed and half-mad over the forge, or practicing swordsmanship against the shadows that were all else Will let into the place. Somewhere in the back of Will’s mind was the idea that it was something he could fight. In his life it had always come down to being able to fight and not being able to, it seemed.

In his dreams was a voice, and where there was a voice, there had to be a body. Where there was a body, there was death as an end.

Elizabeth came several times, and with each visit she grew more impatient with Will’s excuses until finally she jabbed in her folded parasol before he could shut the door and forced her way. Her mouth opened to scold him and then she saw his face, so she gasped instead. “Will, what on earth have you been doing to yourself? You look half-dead.”

“I wish I were half-dead. Even that would be easier,” he muttered, turning away from her. She was too beautiful for his strained eyes to stand. “You should go.”

“No, I should stay and see that you take care of yourself.” As always, she recovered more quickly than he. Her brisk steps followed him as he stumbled towards the water-basin, suddenly conscious of the grime and filth. Every speck of dirt stood out all the brighter against the unearthly whiteness of her linen skirts. “When was the last time you ate? Slept? Will, I haven’t seen you in weeks. I know I missed our last two meetings, and I’ve been trying to explain to you ever since: for some reason, Father has finally noticed that I’ve grown up and insists that I act more womanly—”

The touch of water was soothing at first, clearing Will’s head of its daze. But then he tilted back his chin to let the trickles run down his neck and something impacted in his chest. It felt like a cannonball slamming into him and it doubled him over, dropped him to his knees to the backdrop of Elizabeth’s frightened exclamation. He clutched at himself—his fingers instinctively sought out the coin and even through his shirt he could feel it _beating_ , as if it were a second heart he wore around his neck.

“Will! Will! Oh, God…Mr. Brown! Any—”

No. She couldn’t—Will grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist and jerked it hard to get her attention. “No. Don’t call anyone.”

“But you’re…” Her eyebrows drew together and her eyes narrowed in speculation. Before she sank down beside him, Will noted, she carefully brushed her skirts aside. 

It was the first time he’d ever seen her act in a dignified way, and it hurt the same way seeing Norrington’s new coat after promotion to captain had. Will’s vision blurred and for a terrifying moment, he didn’t recognize anything.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked, tone just short of an order. But the squeeze of her hand around his own was warm and friendly and anchoring.

He clung it to while he tried to order his suspicions, hunches, thoughts. His lips were too dry the first time he tried to speak and so all he could do was croak. The second time, he produced words. “The coin. I think it’s the coin. Something’s wrong with it. I have dreams…about a great treasure hoard, and a dark cave, and a dark ship…”

“Pirates.” She mouthed the word with reverence. Her eyes were shining, and Will could already tell she was far, far away on a wooden deck.

But here he was, brought to his knees by the damned coin, and she had abandoned him for a daydream. Normally Will would have known that that was a little bit unfair, but now he was short on sleep and ravaged by visions of things that never should have been. “Yes, pirates. They’ve raided ships all around these seas, and once they’ve taken a ship, they put everyone to the sword. They kill the children first by cutting their throats in front of their mothers. Then they take the women and they have them in front of their husbands before they—”

“Stop! Stop!” A hand slapped over Will’s mouth, and over it a frightened, outraged Elizabeth stared at him as if she’d never met him before and wasn’t certain she wanted to again. “Why—why are you telling me such horrid things?”

He seized her wrist and pulled it away from him. His temper was fraying and his sight was unsteady, and so he was not quite in control of himself. “Because that’s what it is like outside of the books, Elizabeth. Pirates. Adventure. It’s death—it’s watching people kill those who have treated you well and watching them laugh and not being able to do anything about it.”

For a very long time, she only looked at him, only moving to stand with her hands unconsciously petting her skirts into position. In her eyes was hurt and a want to deny, but she couldn’t do that while she was gazing at him.

Finally she hardened. She drew herself up straight and tall, her chin raised, and she looked at him as if he knew nothing in the world. “You’re a cruel man, William Turner.”

The sound of her skirts whipping out the door hadn’t faded away before Will, remorse quenching his anger, took a step forward and collapsed.

* * *

It seemed he was standing in fire, and staring into the blade of a sword held longways over the flames so it slashed the smoke. Its shining length was marred by stretches of soot that grew and retreated with every breath, and the soot seemed to form a mouth that spoke to him.

‘Who are you?’ Will demanded. He meant to add ‘and what are you doing with me?’ but the roar of the hot air around him silenced his words.

The reply he received was not in the form of words, or even in sound, but in jagged pictures and searing impressions and thrumming bones. But if it had been in words, it might have been rendered thus:

‘I am one who ruled the First Sun, who helped slay the great monster Tlaltecuhtli and who lost a foot to her anger. I am the one who wields the smoking mirror, who blurs and who reveals. I am the wisdom of the flesh and the voice of the dead and the anger of the living, I am he who thirsts for blood and who revenges it. I am Texcatlipoca.’

All at once, the air rushed up in a whirlwind around Will and he could barely stand. His arms lifted of their own accord and he struggled to push them down, but even though there was nothing beneath them, he could not do it. The wind came at his face and blasted it so hard that he thought his skin was peeling away. It blistered his eyes till they watered and then raked away the tears till the pain was blinding and he wanted to scream. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Whoever this Texcatlipoca was, Will wouldn’t scream for him.

The wind dropped as unexpectedly as it had risen and Will felt amusement wrapping around him.

‘If you had opened your mouth, I would have had you whole and I would have no respect for you. I would have laid my curse on you. But you did not, and so I only take your eyes.’

Everything shrieked black—

* * *

\--Will woke up on the ground knowing who had died on its soil. He sat up and he looked out the window to see a train of transparent men, their deaths still apparent in one’s curiously elongated neck and another’s hacked chest, slowly trudge down the road. After he had forced his numb hand to push open the door, he saw that their destination was the church.

It was night, and the height of the moon said late. Then came the tolling of the hour and Will knew for certain it was midnight.

He thought he had gone mad, and that there was no saving him now.

* * *

He had not gone mad, and nor was he completely lost. In the morning he crawled to his bed and he had the first peaceful sleep in weeks, and when he woke there was a slightly-sober Mr. Brown waiting to lecture him on not paying the man’s tab at the local tavern on time. Before, Will had silently sighed and suffered through the scolding, but now he…found that he could open his mouth and tell Mr. Brown yes, it’d be seen to and if he’d excuse Will, there was water to be fetched and a donkey to be fed.

Somehow crossing Mr. Brown seemed trivial compared to getting away from the dark things moving in the shadows of the forge.

It was the first time Will had been outside in a long time and the sunlight hurt his eyes. He paused and blinked, trying to accustom himself to it, and the wind curled impish fingers through his hair.

‘You almost called them,’ shivered the shadow of a girl skipping down the road. ‘The water draws them near.’

A hummingbird buzzed past and the sound of its wings chuckled at Will. ‘I will show you and teach you things that you have never dreamed of. And I will make my price light, in honor of your courage and your former innocence.’

“Former?” Will muttered. A small part of him said that this was absurd, that no one sane talked to shadows and birds, or felt a pulse in a coin hanging against their chest, but that small part was quickly weakening. Because he undeniably was doing all of those things, and because it was day and he could see that the world he’d known before still existed. He could make sense of this, if he tried hard enough. He had to. He wasn’t about to give up now; if there was a way to fight this, he would find it.

‘You had never shed another’s blood before you died,’ hissed the passing of a gull’s shadow across Will. Against his breast, the coin vibrated. ‘But you will. You will.’

* * *

For a while, he listened to it. He told himself he was only learning so as to become better than the teacher and then to throw out the voice. Texcatlipoca knew, and laughed at Will for it, but in that laugh was a strange fracture that gave Will hope.

In the day, he made kitchen utensils and fashioned swords from his dreams. He walked the docks and watched the sailors at work, careful to stay clear of the sea-spray. And he made an uneasy peace with Elizabeth, who was always a little wary of him now. Too, her father kept her close and busy with instruction on preparing for the marriage that loomed nearer and nearer.

Will would have felt angry and frustrated and sad, but for the fact that Texcatlipoca thrived on it. Every time Will let himself think on Elizabeth, the shadows and the crackling of the fire would whisper bloody, outrageous, awful proposals that were too tempting. So he buried his feelings, and concentrated only on the clean shining gold of Elizabeth’s hair.

Once they met by chance near the old yard where once upon a time they had practiced swordplay. Elizabeth’s maid was near, but distracted with haggling over a bolt of silk off the most recent ship into port.

“Are you feeling better?” Elizabeth asked. Her hands stayed demurely folded about the handle of her parasol, but her eyes boldly met Will’s.

“I think so.” He couldn’t help but lower his eyes, but his fingers kept stretching of their own accord towards her. “How is your father? He commissioned a sword from me—from Mr. Brown—the other day.”

Her hands clenched. “He’s encouraging Captain Norrington. But he does ask after you, Will. Norrington came to dinner once and mentioned that you started a few times at nothing while you were mending some things aboard the _Dauntless_.”

“There’ve been men hung on that ship. Recently.” Though Will didn’t say _pirate_ or _deserter_ or _mutineer_ , which were all the same in Elizabeth’s books, the words still hung between them. He watched her flinch and ached to apologize.

“I should go back before Estrella notices I’m gone.” Elizabeth made a short curtsey and hurried off.

As usual, the shadows of the grass rustled. ‘She envies you. She wants to see what you see—that is why she always leaves before you can see it in her. She never wanted to share your secrets. She only wants them.’

“Stay away from her,” Will snarled, turning on his heel. As he passed a store window, his reflection twisted into a laughing face.

* * *

“Your repairs were of excellent quality,” Norrington told Will, stiff in his starch and lace, soft and worried in his eyes. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he’d forgotten he was not on deck but on dock, and over his shoulder Will could see a dead pirate cackling. “I wanted to thank you personally for that.”

“You’re welcome.” The pirate was mouthing something, but Will couldn’t quite make it out. It was important, he knew. By now he’d learned to feel the difference between a spirit who merely wanted to talk and one who had something to say.

The commodore was shuffling, showing his unease. He ducked his head and coughed, then looked at Will again. First he started to ask about Mr. Brown, but he stopped himself and changed the subject. “William, I realize it has been a long time, but I’ve never—I still hold concern for you. You seem to be doing well at your trade, but…I would like you to know that I will take complaints from anyone, whatever their station in life. Justice must be fair.”

‘Pirates. He speaks of my pirates,’ said the shifting half-shade Norrington’s hat threw over his face. ‘They range near. Tomorrow night they will pass this port and they will sack the next one.’

“Tomorrow you’re sailing,” Will blurted. He would have been embarrassed, but he was only half-listening.

Startled, Norrington blinked and resettled his shoulders. “Why, yes. After the ceremonies.”

The ceremonies. Norrington’s rise to commodore, and soon after, his proposal to Elizabeth, whereupon Will’s world would be forever changed.

‘Hate him.’ The dark veil rippling over Norrington’s face oozed with malice.

 _No_ , Will thought.

No, because Will could still remember kindness to a young boy, and because Elizabeth couldn’t seem to confide in him anymore. He couldn’t let go of the one and couldn’t claim the other, and so he wouldn’t presume. It wasn’t right.

He thought he still knew what that was.

* * *

When the pirate threatened Elizabeth, Will was in the church staring through the candlesmoke at the glass windows, and trying desperately to see some way to keep Norrington and pirates from meeting. To see some way to rid himself of the pall that had fallen between him and Elizabeth, to see some way to change everything to how it should have been.

He did see one. And so that was why he missed the pirate’s capture by, of all people, Mr. Brown, and why he was slowly lowering the coin—tightly clenched in his scarred hand—into the ocean when Norrington emerged from the jail.

The water rose to meet Will and sucked in his hand to the wrist so hard and so fast that he lost his balance. His face plunged beneath the water and it was flaming scarlet. As it shaded to black, he faintly felt hands seizing his shoulders.

* * *

“So we meet again,” Elizabeth greeted him. He was lying in a bed in the Governor’s mansion and she was seated beside him, well-worn book in hand. Her hand was just falling from her mouth, as if she had reverted to her girlish habit of chewing her nails. She looked deathly worried behind her half-hearted teasing. “Will, what were you doing? First I nearly drown—but that was because of the corset—and then you…Norrington said something about not believing his company was that unpleasant when he brought you here. And he never makes jokes.”

What Will had been doing was calling pirates. Was starting an adventure that should not, if he did everything right, end in his _true_ death but that could very well do so if he put one foot wrong. Was risking everything for two people that might not even notice.

At least Texcatlipoca was not speaking to him. It felt…Will was not entirely certain, but it felt as if he’d shocked the voice into silence.

“I saw a ghost,” Will finally said. He essayed a half-smile. “I should be used to that by now…wait, did you say you almost drowned?”

She told him the story, adding in embellishments that for a brief time, joined them together in the old conspiracy. But soon her father came to retrieve her and Will was sent on his way, with a manservant to see that he reached the forge.

He did, and he walked straight through, only stopping to take his best sword and to lead the donkey into the yard of a neighbor who had been friendly to him. He thought about leaving a message for Elizabeth, but the rising of the wind told him there was not time. So he hurried to the docks, where he surprised a fisherman coming back late. Will sidestepped as Norrington had once shown him to do and hit the man on the head, then carefully laid him on the ground. But for all Will’s care, he had still left a cut on the man’s temple.

‘You will spill the blood of others,” slithered the clouds across the moon. Hungrily.

Will got into the fisherman’s skiff and took it out into the harbor to meet the black ship he knew was coming. “Not for you. I won’t do it for you.”

When the ship reared into view, he reached for the coin to hold it up, and then he realized Elizabeth didn’t need a message after all. What nestled beneath his shirt was not the right coin.

‘She’ll call them, unless you…’

He cursed as he pricked his finger and smeared a drop of blood across the coin. He was still cursing as he held it up so its song would echo across the waters, but by the time the ship turned towards him, he was praying that they would not notice the difference in melody.

When they pulled up short and sent out the longboat, Will could see and recognize their faces, nightmares from childhood finally coming true. And he saw that they had not.


	2. Wave and Wind (Chalchiúhtlicue)

She had always wanted a story of her own. Her life was easy and rich and oh-so-patterned, a logical progression from petticoats to wedding dress to babies that stretched out before her like the road to Calvary.

It had not been particularly hard to have a copy made; a bit of wax snapped off the end of a candle, softened between her hands and then pressed to the coin when Will had let her look at it once. For a moment. He always was nervous about it, and even more so after—but Elizabeth knew nothing about that. What she knew was that caring nothing for the usual fripperies of girls had finally acted in her favor, for she had been able to save up the money necessary for the goldsmith and now she held the price to her adventure in her hand.

It seemed like simply another coin, albeit one with an excitingly macabre decoration on it. Though when she held it up to the candlelight, placing the coin against the backdrop of the night sky, the gold seemed to glow reddish around the edge. But that was all.

She would give it a night, Elizabeth told herself. Just one night, and in the morning when she went to see that Will was well, she would exchange the coins.

He worried her, and frightened her. Sometimes when they passed each other in the street, their eyes would meet and her heart would flutter in her throat, fanning a blush in the skin. She would see the way his sleeves bunched over the muscles of his arms and secretly a faintness would hatch within her. Will could be kind in ways that touched her deeper than anything else.

But sometimes he would look beyond her shoulder at something that she could never see and the hollowness in his eyes turned her cold as death inside. And sometimes he could be cutting as the beautiful swords he made with the words he threw in her face. Those times, she looked at commodore Norrington and she thought perhaps it would be better to take quiet polite boredom. But only for a little while.

Will was wrong. It could not be all bad, or else no one would ever venture beyond their doorstep. Or else he would never have left the forge.

But he _had_ nearly drowned, and when Norrington had brought him in all dripping and wet and deathly pale, Elizabeth had come the closest to truly fainting in her entire life. So perhaps it was that awful for him—in that case, he would appreciate a night away from it.

Elizabeth hoped he was all right.

The coin twisted in her fingers and her eyes snapped back to it. She thought she heard…laughter. But it was difficult to tell because just then the cannon boomed across the waters.

* * *

When Estrella saw the pirates, she fainted and Elizabeth was secretly relieved. The other woman had babbled so much that Elizabeth could not think, and had kept dragging them upstairs where they would only be trapped. The swords in the coat of arms over the mantelpiece might have been too rusted to draw, but that might have been for the best, after all. The fireplace pokers were closer to the sticks Will and she had used to spar.

Poppet she wasn’t, and the two that had made it into the mansion seemed to consider their swords to be overly large knives. She sent them out a window and rushed out the servants’ passage into the streets, the coin bouncing on its chain about her neck and the blood pounding in her ears. Elizabeth hastily tucked the coin into her dress and hiked up her skirts as best she could with one hand; she wished that she’d managed to hide her cut-down men’s clothes from her father. It would have made things easier.

In town it was slices of chaos: a man’s screaming mouth, the shadows of droplets spraying across the sky, the flash of lace toppling backward beneath the weight of a broad scarred back and the small white hands flopping helplessly over the pirate’s shoulders. Between the slices it was pitch-dark, as if the images were being flayed from the night’s body.

It was not as it had been in the books. There, Elizabeth and her heroes had had no difficulty conjuring up a perfect shot at the enemy despite the “moonless nights” and the “thick fogs.” Here, she stood shaking in the street with the poker weighting her arm, looking in vain for the stances of her spar-games with Will and for—

\-- _Will_. She hefted the poker and ran for the blacksmith’s.

Once she had begun to move, it did not seem as frightening. The dress she wore now, while not as compressing as the corset from the morning, still bound her lungs and she cursed it. Cursed and gasped and when a long length of silver swung at her, she had parried and ducked past before she even realized it had been a challenge. Something snatched at her skirts and nearly pulled Elizabeth off her feet, but she yanked. Fabric ripped as she regained her stride, now longer for the extra freedom.

Hot air and cool alternately blew about her exposed ankles; a fire had broken out in the building beside the forge. The flames licked the underbellies of the stars and roared like a dragon. Stumbling to a stop, Elizabeth ran up against a nearly solid wall of heat that sparked a burning between her breasts. Her hand flew to press through the front of her dress and she felt drums beating.

No, she heard them. Down the road was the harbor, and on the docks stood a man with a feathered hat. Beside him a tall Ethiopian—skin that dark, he could be nothing else—pounded a long weirdly carved cylinder, and behind was Will hanging in the grasp of pirates.

“This was not the bargain!” he was shouting. Distance and dark did not keep Elizabeth from missing the bruises on his face.

She was already running for the dock, poker swinging wildly in her hand because she was growing tired and the hard ground wore through her thin slippers.

“Aye, the bargain. But I am keeping it—you can’t expect me to have predicted your generous offer before I had my men land ahead of me. We’ll be leaving soon enough, after they’ve slaked themselves enough to bend an ear.” The pirate captain’s voice was like a snake’s, of course, but no snake Elizabeth had ever imagined could sound so cold. It chilled her.

Beneath her hand, trapped between dress and skin, the coin twisted. It gnawed at her and she frantically yanked it out, only to feel someone seize her shoulders. She screamed.

Over her scream came the words of the captain. “Take him aboard!”

“Elizabeth?” But Will had already disappeared behind a wall of pirates, who came smarming from every dark corner.

“Will! Will!” Elizabeth kicked and fought, and it wasn’t until she had been dragged halfway to the fort that she realized her captors wore Navy blue and King’s red.

* * *

“But you have to go after him,” she cried, shaking off her shock.

Before her, Norrington’s face remained regretful but unyielding. And he did not straighten from his maps, but instead hunched farther over them. Between his fingers ruler and lead pencil drew and redrew lines, as if marking out the boundaries of a prison. “Elizabeth, the last of the pirates only left an hour ago. I have a terrified, ravaged town to—”

She would have no truck with boundaries. Her hand pulled the knob shut on the door before he had finished speaking and she stormed past the guards, the contemptuous lieutenants, the still faint Estrella.

It was _Will_. A part of her said reasonably enough that yes, the town was badly damaged, and yes, those were dark bruises on Estrella’s face and yes, the rusty stains on Elizabeth’s skirts did look like the wadding she drew out from between her legs monthly, but her mind was turned towards the desperation she had seen on Will’s face and she could not look away. Her apparent suitor had not even mentioned Will’s name. It was as if once Will’s feet had left the sands of Port Royal, he had ceased to exist.

_You are young yet. Think._

Her breath caught and her step nearly stumbled. But with the next stride she was already recovering, reaching for the tenuous guide. _Will_ , her heart said.

 _Think. Go after him._ The words were suspended susurrations, speaking of age and old wisdom and power.

Later she would think back, and remember that they came from the sea air and not the coin, but then she did not think.

Elizabeth began to calm once she had reached the mansion. There she was able to greet her distraught father with a kiss on the cheek and quietly allow herself to be tucked into bed two hours before sunrise. When Estrella was finally persuaded to leave her be, Elizabeth was coolly reading her favorite pirate novel.

It was the first thing that went into her bag, which remained otherwise empty until she had left her letter on the bed and had slipped down the side of the house to make her stealthy way to the forge. Once there, she exchanged her skirts for breeches and bound her hair back with a thong. She picked among the swords and blades till she had found one long and one short blade that suited her. As she searched about the place, she passed near the forge and for a moment she was faint with heat. Her head grew dizzy and she thought she heard the drums of the pirates beating once more. But Elizabeth firmed her resolve and shook it off—she had no time for fancies. In the afternoon the pirate would be hung, and so she must to the jail.

* * *

“And where the advantage for myself, young miss?” asked the pirate, voice caressing as the fingers he drew slowly up and down the bars. He seemed to curve snakelike against his prison, as if he lingered there only of his own choice.

Now this Elizabeth recognized: chapter seven, page eleven. She smiled back and dangled the keys before her, well aware of the provocation of her dress. The first ray of morning stole in the window, glanced off the key to something else and nearly blinded her—the coin. No matter how tightly Elizabeth belted Will’s shirt, she could not pull the front entirely closed and so it had let the coin dangle free. “Your freedom, in exchange for your aid. We’ll make a pact, and if you should break it my father will be after you with all the might of the Royal Navy.”

The gold mesmerized the pirate. Something black and reminiscent of the other pirate captain flicked through his eyes, and the idle twisting of his fingers briefly grew purposeful, as if to snap. “Where did you find that, Miss…?”

What possessed her, Elizabeth never afterward quite wanted to admit. But then with the coin sliding between her fingers like water, the smell of salt stinging her nose, it seemed altogether natural. “Turner. Elizabeth Turner. It was my brother who Barbossa took—William.”

“William Turner.” Now the pirate was all attention. “He had a sister…well, it seems Bootstrap stuffed more’n one card up his sleeve…”

The bars of the window striped a reddening sky. Elizabeth held out her hand. “Do we have an accord?”

A mysterious half-smile, exactly described in chapter two, page thirty-three, graced Jack Sparrow’s face as he carefully clasped her fingers. “I do believe we do.”

* * *

They stole out of Port Royal’s harbor as the sun’s orb had just risen fully above the horizon. It seemed as if Jack expected her to be impressed with his cleverness, but she had read better. Far more distracting to Elizabeth was the sea: her near-drowning had been the closest she had been allowed to the ocean in years, and now she was wading in it. Breathing nothing but its—so it seemed, for the ripples that softly washed around her were like the delicate lift of a chest beneath blue silk—exhale, feeling it drench through her clothes and her skin.

It was whispering to her, she giddily thought. It told her that Will was unharmed, it told her that the ship they were busily stealing was fast and elegant and had fed many others to the sea’s maws. It told her that the soldiers and sailors would fall for the distraction on the one ship and allow them to steal the other if she did _this_ , and when she did, there she and Jack were on the deck, watching the docks of Port Royal recede behind them.

From the fortress dashed a moving dot of blue and white. Norrington, Elizabeth realized, and then she noticed her hand clutching the coin to her chest so hard that when she took her hand away, the palm was marked deep red with coin’s engraving.

“Looking a bit less cheerful,” Jack murmured, sidling up too familiar and too quiet. “Thinking on your brother?”

And the slap of the waves hissed a warning. Elizabeth stepped out of the circle Jack had attempted to draw round her with his body and the railing, and she raised her chin. This was her mission, not his, and she would have to ensure that he remembered it was so. “Where are they taking him?”

“I believe a course for Tortuga would be best.” He slipped back to the wheel, hands restless on the wood as if he found it faintly distasteful.

 _Listen to what is not said_ , splashed the water, and Elizabeth thought she did.

“Is Will in Tortuga?” she demanded.

And Jack gave her a look that was not in Elizabeth’s books of adventures on her high skies, but that was in her detested volumes on decorous behavior. It told her how little she knew and it curled her nails into her palms. “No, but we’ll not be getting to Isle de Muerte without a crew. We’ll be lucky to reach Tortuga with only our four hands. You asked for my help, Liza. Here it is.”

“Do not presume to give me pet names, Captain Sparrow.” But she could not argue with his logic, however maddening his presentation of it was. Her frustration she pressed down till it sank from her mouth and seemed to evaporate through her skin. It flavored the dampness of the air.

Jack’s chuckle echoed double, or so Elizabeth thought, with the second amused shading originating in her breast. But when her fingers brushed the coin, she felt nothing but cool smooth metal.

“You’d do well to hide that,” he said, nodding towards Will’s token. His hand molded the air into a path towards her shoulder, half-bared because of the looseness of the shirt.

“You would do well to wander less,” she replied, and in her voice was another echo. It made Jack look sharply at her, and from then on he refrained from being condescending, though he was still not respectful. Not to her.

_You are young yet._

Perhaps, but Elizabeth was putting into motion that which her elders would or could not. It should earn her some recognition. It should save Will.

Her fingers twisted together around the ropes she pulled, let out, knotted in accordance to Jack’s orders, and she asked again and again if it was true that Will was unharmed. Again and again, the answer was yes, but always with a lingering trace that told her _hurry, hurry_.

* * *

“The wickedest city on earth,” Jack said, and Elizabeth was only half-listening because the sights were overwhelming.

She breathed and she smelt the sins of the centuries, rank and rich and vivid in a way that the delicate perfumes of her old life could not compare. And then she opened her eyes and the shadows played over the background of men of all shades of skin, of women dressed picturesquely provocative, and it was like an engraving come to life.

They found the man Jack was looking for, and together Jack and he huddled together in a corner, plotting and planning and scheming. Several times they cast wary, ominous glances at Elizabeth, and in particular Jack seemed to hold her at arm’s length, but that mattered little to Elizabeth. She could revel in the secrets that the slop of the rum in their mugs told her, in the salt-smell that peaked above the miasma of alcohol and stale vomit and muddy ground.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

Jack’s finger drew slowly through the spilled rum on the table. Overlaid with his whispers of leverage was the drip-drop of another voice, feminine and low. ‘I am the water, the rain and the sea. I am the life of the deserts and the death of the floodplains, I am the mistress of all that slumbers beneath the waves. I am Chalchiúhtlicue, and you are the youngling who would see us waken.’

Elizabeth was not certain what was meant by wanting to see them awaken, for she did not even know who _they_ were. But she did know that finally she was stepping into Will’s world, into a realm where the everyday niceties could be ripped off and those chains thrown to the wind. Where she could see as he did, side by side with him, and have no things such as class or stale gratitude stand in the way.

‘Are you the one who speaks to—’

Gurgling laughter that suddenly cooled the air behind Elizabeth’s back. ‘No. He who speaks to your Will is he who you should fear more.’

Drowning. Her nails clenched in the post against which she leaned and she stared out at the crowded bar from which the warm veils of quaintness had been slashed away. There were eyes—hundreds of them, it seemed, and now they were ice-coals in their dead bleared stares, bulging from the faces of the drowned. But they were hungry and grasping, stripping past her boy’s clothes to her living flesh that was not so distant from what their own had once been.

She reached before she could think and then there was air swirling forth from behind her: air heavy with salt and with moisture, air with all the power of the ocean behind it. It forced back the eyes of the dead behind their living masks, and for a moment she delighted in her newfound position.

‘I offer my help for reasons other than yours, girl, but nevertheless I do not do so lightly. This will cost.’

Once again, the space behind Elizabeth turned cold and empty. When a hand fell on her shoulder, she nearly startled into Jack’s arms.

He held her off, though his fingers drifted only slowly from her shoulder. “Come, Liza. We’ve done enough talk. Now to find ourselves a crew.”

“Elizabeth,” she insisted. “You are far too familiar, Mr. Sparrow.”

His eyebrow rose, and behind him grizzled old Mr. Gibbs eyed Elizabeth as if she had grown into something vaguely horrendous. But Jack pushed him back and stepped careful about her, as if acquiescing to her wishes. “I’d say you’re more familiar by far,” Jack murmured. “More familiar than I’d prefer to be.”

He left her no chance to query him on the meaning in his words, but instead rushed them about the town on their hunt. Soon Elizabeth noticed that Jack had let her wander ahead, and that her feet seemed to slip along the alleys to the orders of a voice not his or hers. It was for Will, she told herself. For Will, and so they must hurry by any means necessary.

* * *

On the docks of Port Royal, the sunlight and the comedy of Jack’s past sins coming to roost briefly brought back the air of romanticism, but soon after they had put to sea a storm had blown that to ribbons. Elizabeth clung to her line as another wave rattled her and chilled her bones so they vibrated with shivers long after the water had sluiced off the planks. Her ears were filled with the thin high screams of the lost at sea, which crested with every swell of water, and it made her head swim worse than anything else. Was this the price? she wondered.

“Jack!” Gibbs was calling. “She can’t—”

“She will. Another moment.” The slur was gone from Jack’s voice and the consonants of his words were as hard as his black gaze on Elizabeth. It expected something.

Fingers tangled around Elizabeth’s wrist, so slippery that at first she thought it was seaweed. But no, Anamaria’s face hove into view and her hiss threaded through the deafening sounds of the dead. “Call her.”

“But this is—”

“This is _him_. But ain’t his…” crashing water momentarily separated them “…call her. Y’got her, I can see. _Call_ her.”

The storm’s punishing blows mounted higher and higher, shaking the ship till Elizabeth began to lose sense of up and down, left and right. She desperately held to her rope, though it scraped through her palms and occasionally splashed warmer, redder, more coppery drops on her face, and she tried to answer. But this was not in the books, and she did not know what was meant by _call her_. In the tavern she had already been speaking to Chalchiúhtlicue when she had asked, but now there was no sign of the voice and all Elizabeth could do was choke down sobs and flail—

\--she touched a laugh.

The waves fell to half their height, and then to smooth dark calm. Weak and limp and confused, Elizabeth clung to her rope and tried to ignore the way the crew’s half-relieved, half-terrified stares arced to her.

“Wish you whatever good you’ll get of this,” was how Anamaria left her. The other woman picked her feet through the mess of the deck, stride sure and knowing and all herself.

 _That is two, girl._ Delicate chuckles fell on Elizabeth’s face with flecks of foam, and she began to understand why Will might hate it so.

* * *

In the cave the water glittered gold and the ceiling seethed black and the air echoed with the ancient cries of tortured victims. Elizabeth crouched low in the boat, not to see better the treasure, but to drag her hands through the water in an attempt to lose herself in that song. _Will_ , she chanted to herself.

‘Near,’ whispered the soft ripples slicing by the sides of the boat.

“…they’ll be all about the chest, I believe. We’d best land here and then make out the lay of things before we go further.” Jack spoke in a whisper and watched her hands, watched her as close as he would a hissing snake. He was afraid of her, she thought.

Or perhaps that was the words of the drops pattering from the toothy stone ceiling.

It did not matter at the moment. What did was peering over the rocks into the glittering, jeweled bowels of the cave and seeing Will, neck held above a chest of coins with blade to it. It was the exact scene of her second-favorite novel and it wasn’t, for the engravings and the words had never spoken of the deep chill that seized all of Elizabeth’s limbs, the fear that parched her throat and paralyzed her fingers against the stone. The knife was real—it caught the glints of the gold and reflected them coldly up at her—and it would yield blood and suddenly she knew that there was no play-acting here. There was only Will, and she and Jack up above, and all the world rested on their actions.

Jack had turned away from her, some old revenge calling him more strongly. “A moment…”

Elizabeth silently ducked beneath his hand, which was reaching out to stay her, and scooped a heavy statuette from the sands. He fell with only the barest whisper of a sound and, a little regretful, she pillowed his head gently to the ground. But then there came the uproar from around the chest and she had to go. Will needed her.

* * *

Temple already blackening from Barbossa’s blow, Will lifted his head and saw her—for the barest moment. Then his eyes flicked to the coin hanging between her breasts and his mouth began to twist in anger.

She covered it with her hand and pulled him fast into the water where it was silent, fearful that the pirates arguing above would notice them again. And yes, because the sea was saying, _hurry hurry_ , and because its voice was so thin and frail here, where someone else’s voice strove to echo through Elizabeth’s head.

Later, when they had climbed dripping wet to the deck, Elizabeth answered Anamaria: “He fell behind.”

And Will’s head lifted and he fixed her with deep hollow eyes that were not entirely his own. “ _He_?”

Cotton passed by, and as he did his parrot turned on his shoulder to meet Will’s uncanny, too-many gaze. The smile on Will’s face was not entirely his own. “Ah. You mean _they_.”

Elizabeth pulled him below before he could frighten the crew, leaving the captaincy to Anamaria who watched them with eyes like Jack’s.

* * *

The flash of the coin in his eyes finally seemed to snap Will out of his daze, but what replaced it was not relief or happiness, but fury. He snatched for the coin and ripped it from her so hard that the thong burned a thin red trail across her palm. “You had no right, Elizabeth. Moreover, you’ve done—you’ve ruined everything.”

“I saved your life. They would have killed you, Will,” she hotly replied. When he reached for her again, she slapped him.

Black rose high in his eyes and frightened, she stepped back a pace only to feel something rush up behind her. There was nothing she could see or smell or truly touch, but it was still there and he saw it. _Will_ saw it, and Will broke through whatever—whoever—he carried with him.

They stared at each other, like two children who had been playing ghosts only to have the lights go out without their touching them.

Then his shoulders slumped and they took the rest of his body with them; he sat down and put his head in his hands. When she sat down, one hand fell to the table. It was entangled round with the strung coin, which Elizabeth nervously pushed out of the way with a nail before she dared touch his fingers. Her hurt palm touched the oozing cut on his, and beneath the thin coat of blood, the old scar of the skull-gold.

“I tried going to church. I got the priest to bless my hand under the pretext that I was nervous about working on the Navy’s ships. God doesn’t bar them,” Will finally said. What Elizabeth could see of his eyes was dullness. “They _are_ gods—Tezcatlipoca is—and he at least wishes to walk again. He’s bound to the coins. If I want him gone, then I have to end the curse. Or he will kill everyone through Barbossa.”

“ _She_ wants him to sleep.” Elizabeth met Will’s surprise as honestly as she could. Her fingers roved over his hand till she could squeeze his wrist, and she bowed her head over their joined hands. “I didn’t think it would be—I wanted to help you. I did this for you.”

His eyes abruptly sparked to angry life, and he tried to withdraw his hand. “For me and for your adventure. I told you, Elizabeth. I told you what it was like and you never believed me. If you hadn’t taken the coin, I could have ended it all a few hours ago, but now we have to go back.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know—”

The air shuddered and she threw herself at Will. A moment later, the ship rocked from some explosion.

They were pressed thigh to thigh, belly to belly and arm to arm. Their breath was one and so was their fear, but when Elizabeth looked into Will’s eyes, she knew they were not seeing the same. And it was cowardly, but now she did not ever want to know what he saw. What the crashing of the water alongside the ship said was awful enough.

“Turners! Elizabeth! Will!”

Something small and hard and round burned between them, bright as the sudden comprehension in Will’s eyes. “What did you tell them?” he demanded.

“What I had to! What I needed to so that they’d help and you would live! Will, I don’t want—what I want more than an adventure is for you to live.”

His fingers squeezed her so hard she thought bones would break, and he rocked so close that their lips brushed. But then he was on his feet and dragging them towards the ladder. Behind, on the floor, something glinted. The coin.

Elizabeth tore herself free and dove for it just as the ship lurched.

* * *

Once again, there was Will’s desperate face before her and his shouts ringing her ears while the water, no longer a comfort, mercilessly clasped her within itself. But his fingers were wrenched from hers and she had to take that last gasp before, squeezing her eyes shut in terror, letting herself sink.

She fell further and further, until she had passed the point at which she should have struck part of the ship. Elizabeth opened her eyes to endless serene green.

‘It will cost you, girl. I do not want to walk and I will have to, if he is to be put to sleep.’ Bubbles rose all around her and popped, each releasing a few murmurs.

‘Will! Where is—’ She struck at the nothingness and found hard walls. ‘Take me to him. Whatever the price.’

And the waters billowed about her, rushing tight to coil her and slipping insolently between her legs. They were laughing again, and they continued to laugh as they raked her month’s course from her a week early. The pain was unbearable, was excruciating and she was going to die, she was going to fail Will, she was—

‘I still have the taste for blood, occasionally. Feed me, girl. That will be my price.’

Then she was thrown upward.

* * *

It was a nightmare, Elizabeth thought. Pistol to her temple, Will before her and again in the clutches of pirates, and Barbossa’s yellowed chipped grin mocking her every word. But she faced it and she did not think of the pirate novel, now sinking into Chalchiúhtlicue’s clutching bosom. No, she thought instead that this was not what she wanted and this would not be what she ran to in the future, but that this was what had to be done.

She thought she sounded grimmer, and older, and she thought it would have been amusing if she had still been young.

“Do we have an accord?” she asked of Barbossa, and she could see that Will was shaking his head, fighting the gag, but if Barbossa took Will again, Will would not have only his hand cut. So the waves said, and so she knew because it was not romantic to hear but only bloody and terrifying.

Will needed time. He and Jack had to come to the cave in their own way, if all was to be locked away and not, instead, thrown wider open like Pandora and her box.

“I believe we do,” Barbossa answered. And Elizabeth discovered that she had been left a little innocence, for she trusted in his word for that one moment before he called for the plank.

The gods were cruel.


	3. Ragged Wisdom (Quetzalcóatl)

If the girl had worried him, then the boy terrified Jack.

Long days of waiting and searching and listening for the slightest whispers in the haze and wind and spray had taught Jack something about fear. Long nights of bedding ashore, or in a poor rickety second to she who’d always be first, had taught him more about risk, and loneliness and things that were worse than death.

The sun was warm on Jack’s head and the sand-water sluicing around his ankles was the comfortable temperature of his body, and the ice in his gut only grew when he tore his eyes from her stern to the man standing beside him. They had not been formally introduced before Elizabeth had leaped the railing, but the man’s face needed no introduction to Jack.

What lay behind his eyes, however, was a different, colder story, and very much akin to the new grim cool calculation that had underlaid the glint in Elizabeth’s gaze. If she had been girlish leverage before, now she was something beyond Jack, like the mermaids that combed their hair so prettily before singing sailors onto the rocks. And if William Turner’s son had ever been young and foolish and pliant, he had been forged and tempered long before Jack’s coming.

“I was a friend of your father.” It was as good an opening as any, seeing that Jack was not quite sure whom he was addressing.

“You’ll want to tell me he was a pirate. Barbossa already told me that, and what happened to him. Jack…Sparrow.” Lingering over the last name Jack had taken for himself, rolling its syllables as a goldsmith would pebbles of ore before properly assaying them. Then the man turned, and what else was with him flickered away so it was only him who seized Jack by the shoulder and dragged him ashore. “Will Turner. I remember Elizabeth saying you escaped from here once—”

Jack shook him off and quickstepped backward, keeping a wide stretch of soft yellow sands between them. “She’d not be your sister, would she? Or if so, then not by Bootstrap.”

“No.” As firm as the answer was, it seemed that Will hesitated. But then he shook his head and turned his back on Jack, heading further inland. His shadow stretched shapeless and twisting behind him and beside the sharp black outline Jack threw on the beach. “No, she is not and her blood won’t end the curse. But I’m going to rescue her, and you’re going to help.”

For a moment, his voice doubled and Jack’s hackles rose at it, not only because he was wary but also because he was—angry. Will was presumptuous in a way he did not deserve to be.

The young are foolish and hasty and demanding, Jack reminded himself. Though his words rang hollow against the piercing cries of the gulls above.

* * *

Rum made sense of the world when it confused Jack, and confused the world when it made too much sense. Its fumes were a familiar welcome that obscured the tight, painful memories that also flooded out of the cache-hole. “See? Reckon they’ve not been round in some months. Your navy and your commodore’s done quite well in sweeping the Caribbee free of scum.”

“He is not my commodore.” Will bit off the ends of the words and left them bleeding raw and raging as he backed away from the hole. Then he turned and stared, not at the sun like most desperate men, but at the dark waving shadows of the palm fronds. His face clenched. “Don’t…mention him.”

“Why? Oh, are you _fond_ of him?” It was cruel, but then, Jack had never been known for his forbearance of patronization. Bootstrap’s son he was beyond a doubt, but Will had neither the rank nor the reason for ordering Jack about.

And they were trapped on the same damned spit of sand and trees and nothing, and once again Jack had had his lady slip through his fingers. He took another draught of rum, hoping to burn away the memory of the last time; at least then he would be suffering only the once and not its recollected twin.

When he lowered the bottle, there was Will standing half a breath away, all black stare and no sound. Perhaps Bootstrap’s never-seen wife had been a witch, a wild girl bred on the mystical bloody rock coasts of Cornwall, for certainly Will had never gotten such deep eyes from his father. Almost before he remembered to breathe, Jack was easing back a pace. His hand drifted out to hold the rum bottle as a shield or as an offering of sorts.

“So this is the legend of the great Captain Jack Sparrow.” Will leaned towards Jack while tilting his head and shoulders first this way and then that way, a serpentine mockery of Jack’s own habits that somehow seethed with threat.

“I’m thinking you never believed in that anyhow,” Jack said, dredging up from somewhere a steady tone and a steel back. The breeze whipped up and billowed in his shirt and sash so it spread wings from his body. “You’re not much like Miss Elizabeth.”

This time Jack could see what made Will’s lips press white together. To his surprise, it was not anger so much as fear. “Don’t mention her either. I don’t want to be reminded.”

An odd thing to say, as Will did not seem to have given up on his self-proclaimed mission. On the contrary, he started to pace around the edge of the pit, lips silently moving. Occasionally he shook his head—gently at first and then with increasing violence.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s how we pirates are. All flash and hopefully, that’ll take care of everything ‘fore we have to resort to substance.” Jack sat himself down on the sand with his bottle and prepared to imbibe till the world went away.

The glass nearly burnt his fingers as his bottle was snatched away. Once again Will had evaded detection to stand before Jack. Will’s eyes were glittering like veins of precious metal in the darkness of a cave, and for the briefest moment Jack smelled fetid spicy smoke, like that which rose off a pagan sacrificial pyre.

“You always disappointed,” Will hissed. Then he put the bottle to his lips and in one gulp drained enough to impress even Jack.

Jack, who knew what it was to be light in years and in astuteness, but who nevertheless felt the exasperation of a younger man rise in him. “Have we met before?” he asked, voice sharp as he rose.

And Will fell, a dazed crumple of limbs and unfocused eyes and tousled hair. He looked up at Jack through long fluttering lashes and was suddenly as young as his face. “No.” The word cracked into a harsh low chuckle as Will’s head tipped back, exposing the paler flesh of his throat. “No, _we_ haven’t. Would—would you like your rum back, Jack?”

Their fingers overlapped on the bottle-neck and a warning sang high and thready in Jack’s ear. But he thought he knew this warning, which felt so familiar and so distant all at once, and he reckoned it without weight. They were on the island, and only they—what need he worry about except himself and Will, and their comforts?

* * *

There was fire, later, to go with the scent of smoke. And a lithe body in the sand beneath Jack, muscles from a life of honest work gleaming with the sweat and spit of a ne’er-do-well pirate. Will came to him unsure, wary, but once their arms had gone round each other, Will had been nothing but eagerness. It had even frightened Jack a little, how easy it was to press up between Will’s thighs, nails digging into hips that were just now discovering this rhythm and mouth tasting spilled rum in Will’s warm mouth. And for fleeting moments, whenever the firelight flickered dark, Will would change in Jack’s grip, change around the tight hold his body had on Jack’s prick. Things would grow hazier and hotter, but so that Jack was chilled and cut to the bone with panic. But then Will’s face would rise into the red and orange and he would bend that throat towards Jack and Jack would forget. Jack always forgot. Regretted later, but never while.

“You remember the story?” Will whispered later, when they were lying twined about each other. As if they were old, old lovers—or perchance old enemies; the one knew the other just as well—meeting again. “No, of course you don’t. The great king, wise and good, who was tricked by his jealous brother into drink and debauchery. In his depravity, he took his beautiful sister to bed. And when he woke and looked in the mirror and saw himself, the shock nearly killed him.”

“Are you saying stay away from your supposed sister? Seems a bit pointless, as Elizabeth isn’t here.” Jack’s mouth was stuffed with raw cotton and his head swam in the uncertain light. There were great walls of gilt and jewels and the finest stonework around him, and then there were only the palms and the sand and the night. He shook himself, reached for that which always helped him see.

Will handed him the bottle. “The king abandoned his throne and went to sea, but he always vowed to return and revenge himself.”

“Understandable.” As always, the rum seared away the dross of the world and lifted Jack that much closer to the feeling of flight. Not quite—never quite like how it was standing at the helm of the _Black Pearl_ , but it sufficed for a little while. “Nasty family. Treason’s always the worst coming from those you know best.”

“Maybe the brother was lonely. It gets that way, in the dark.” Now Will’s voice was hollow, thin and yet resonant, like the murmuring of an underground stream. His hand pressed hard on Jack’s back and he made a sound that was almost a sob. Then he relaxed, sounding more like himself, though that was also bleak and despairing. “I don’t know what kind of pirate you are, but Elizabeth was screaming for you, too. And I don’t hate you that much, to wish on you—go to sleep, Jack. Maybe he’ll ignore you if you stay quiet.”

Jack slept, cheek nestling glass and Will’s whisper coiling uncomfortably in his ear. He dreamt of a bed of knotted snakes, and the rare green flash that lit the horizon just before sundown.

* * *

It wasn’t a faint curl of smell, or even a gradual building of stench, but a sudden overwhelming torrent that ripped Jack from slumber to his feet before he had fully awakened. When his eyes finally condescended to view the world, he saw darkness still.

A moment later, his sight and his mind made out the truth. The sun was not yet over the horizon, but the blackness was more from the billowing smoke than from the night. And in the middle of it stood Will, tossing on what Jack instinctively knew was the last of the rum.

Jack scrambled up to him, toes nearly in the bonfire of the only panacea available to them, and stared in horror. “What are you doing? You’ve burnt everything—the food, the shade, the rum—”

“All that I needed was the rum. The trees are still there.” Will dusted off his hands, and it was such a mundane gesture compared to his prior actions that it more than anything else stopped Jack.

“But why the _rum_? For a signal? It won’t burn long enough, Will, and besides, who would be looking for you?” All that lovely…Jack seized the other man by the arm, near true fury. “You’re worse than any pirate I’ve ever met, though I’m sure you think yourself better.”

Will’s arm was like ice, so cold that Jack feared his hand had frozen to it. But he jerked it away without any harm, and in doing so half-spun Will about so the doubled gaze could make his blood crawl slow and shivering.

“I used to think pirates were the worst—they’d killed my father, and they attacked the ship that brought me from England. But I’ve seen worse than them. You’ve less ghosts about you than many, my merciful brother.” As Will spoke, his voice had dropped lower and lower, till it was more akin to listening to a wardrum beating for blood than to a human being. “You should be grateful for this. I won’t set your sins before you this time.”

“Brother?” Jack said, careful and slow. He heard a better answer echo around him, in the registers that the rum usually dulled to deafness, but he ignored it. Over the years he had learned the price of asking for aid.

He remembered that Elizabeth had seemed so much thinner and brighter, perched on the rail with the pistol to her head, as if a little bit of her had been eaten away. And he looked at Will and he saw the same, only much further along.

As he stared, the other man’s eyes cleared and for a moment, Will gazed at Jack as if about to plead. But then Will sighed and turned to the bonfire, shoulders hunched and fists pressed to his legs. “The Navy will be out looking for—for her. She’s the Governor’s daughter, and Commodore Norrington would like to marry her. They won’t miss the signal.”

The fire suddenly leapt, burning nothing and burning high on it so the smoke drove deep into the sky like a sooty arrow launched by a defiant warrior. And Will’s stare was shaved even thinner.

“What are you paying him?” Jack asked, finally feeling the traces of the night—the better parts of it—on himself. He remembered this time how the rum had tasted clear and sweet in Will’s mouth instead of cloying or stale or sour.

“He’d like her. And him.” Will’s hands signified the commodore in a few strokes and twists. “He wants to walk again, only with someone that isn’t limited by the curse. But he’ll have to settle for me, and I want him to sleep.”

The sun had finally risen, a liquid violent red blot on the parchment-colored sky. It was like the seal on a royal order, or like the end of a world.

He could break it, Jack thought. If he only asked. But then the bill would be presented to him.

* * *

“You swear that he can lead us to Elizabeth.” The commodore was an even fancier concoction of blue and white and gilt than the last time Jack had seen him, but behind all of that he had a pair of serious, concerned brown eyes. They were fixed on Will in a way that made Jack want to laugh and sigh all at once.

Romanticism never did pay, but neither did it cut as deep as the unsmoothed world could. Jack fingered his manacles and leaned against the rail, waiting for this transitory scene to wrap itself up. The rum was slowly teasing its delirium and dreams from him, so he could see too far ahead and so he knew he had nothing to worry over yet.

He whistled a little. Not any song of the homeland, or ditties of those who had no homes, but a birdcall. In the waters of the ocean he saw answering patches of greens streak over the white foam, and he heard the slightest laugh in the burbling of the waves breaking against the ship. But he knew better than to rely on her affection; when the ocean was with him he rejoiced and when it was not he was careful not to presume he could take offense at that. She would be owned by no one.

And she was occupying herself with Elizabeth. He wondered if Will knew about that. Most likely not, given the gaunt worry that hung about him. The girl was safe till Barbossa reached the cave, where the ocean’s realm receded and left others to hold sway. He wondered if Anamaria had seen it in them both, and if so why she hadn’t mentioned it—she could have hissed something before Barbossa had had Jack’s crew taken below. Of course, she always had been more reverent than Jack, and daring to interfere was the height of irreverence.

If he was to have a chance, he really should call. And if he were going to call, he should do so now, while they were in relatively neutral waters.

Instead Jack rested his arms on the rail and grinned at the froth. In the haunted recesses of Will’s and Elizabeth’s eyes, he had seen something he’d liked, something that had resonated with him. They were playing long odds with no true allies, and they were betting everything against the opportunity of a clear slate, a cancellation of all debts. It’d be going against the pattern to go into debt himself merely to set his pieces on the board.

And besides, he was too old to believe in mortgaging the present against the future’s returns. Even if he forgot once in a while.

“Jack? I need you to lead them to the cave. It could get you a pardon,” Will said, coming up beside him. Now the man looked only desperate and tired, and hopeful in the manner of those who the sultan declared who would be only beheaded instead of being tortured to death. His hand lay on the rail, stretching towards Jack’s own, and Jack could feel the hardening of the commodore towards him.

Jack turned from the sea, and smiled, and reached for his compass. “Surely, surely.” He waited till the relief spread across Will’s face before leaning in to say a little more. “You shouldn’t have burned the rum.”

Suspicion smoked over Will’s eyes, but before either could puzzle it out, Jack allowed himself to be led to the helm with clear mind and sight that was all his own.

* * *

Halfway there, Jack had an interesting conversation with Norrington. The other man came up from below, casting a glance towards Will who refused to leave the bow, and arranged himself stiffly next to Jack. He stared at the thick mists that had enveloped them, pretending very well that they did not chill him like they did everyone else but Will.

“I do not know what has transpired between you and Miss Swann and Mr. Turner, but rest assured, you will be held accountable for it.” Norrington was the epitome of civilized law and order, and as such he was sadly out of his depth. But nevertheless it was a gallant stance.

“Never doubted it, commodore.” Jack hung his arms over the wheel while he checked his bearings, whispering silently to she of the ocean to not play any tricks now. He felt a vague disappointment emanating from the dampness in the air, but it seemed her attentions were elsewhere. “By the way, maybe you’d like to let me go in first. Wouldn’t want to risk your neck if there was a chance at negotiating.”

In the front of the ship, Will was a tense unmoving figure who stared ceaselessly at the impenetrable mists. He would be hearing things now, if not seeing them as well.

When this was over, and if it was over well, Jack reminded himself to ask which ghosts Will had seen about him. It was generally unwise to let things stay restless.

“You seem very sure about Barbossa’s receptiveness. I would remind you that the sole reason we go is to rescue Miss Swann, and not to facilitate any secondary plans of yours.” After reclasping his hands behind him, Norrington also gazed forward. Occasionally his eyes would fall on Will and then an uncomprehending, anxious look would spread over his face.

It would not be tactful to laugh, however much Jack wished to. Hopefully the commodore wouldn’t, for with three already moving chips over the board, it was becoming rather crowded. “Of course not. Maybe you should get some food into Will—I don’t believe Barbossa would have had the decency to feed him often.”

A lie, for Barbossa’s tastes in torment lay elsewhere, but after a long sharp stare, Norrington did leave to go up to Will. Just as well, since Will would do better to save his strength till they were in the cave, and since Jack needed a little more time to think.

Something red and yellow fluttered high amid the sails, but it was gone when Jack looked upward. Then he did smile, for he hardly needed the reminder of the death lurking nearer and nearer.

But nevertheless, he still refrained from asking.

* * *

Will was not so foolish as to try and babble of walking dead to Norrington or the others, but he did his best to insist that he and Jack should go in first. However, he was overruled and then locked within Norrington’s own cabin under the pronouncement of ‘sick.’ He did look so, with the wide maddened gaze and the sallow tint to his skin, but he was still fighting when Jack and Norrington at last set off. It distracted Norrington and the man kept glancing over his shoulder, though he strove hard not to be obvious about it.

“Really, commodore. Worst that could happen would be they’d kill me—you don’t think I could do anything with only myself?” Jack rubbed at his wrists till the memory of iron had disappeared in the warmth of the friction. “And it could prevent so many injuries and maybe even deaths…”

“All right, fine. But you have only ten minutes. After that, we go in whether you’ve come out or not,” Norrington finally said.

So Jack slipped over the side and he went back into the maws of the cave where the wisps of fog rising off the water all had the faces of the dead. He landed and made his way into the center in time to see Barbossa force Elizabeth’s stiff neck over the chest and touch the blade to it.

The wet fabric of Jack’s clothes abruptly tightened about him. A low gushing rumble reverberated around the stone hollows, but not nearly loud enough to signal real power. “I…wouldn’t, mate.”

“Oh, I would.” Barbossa drew back the knife so the cut would be wide and deep. Elizabeth, Jack saw, didn’t flinch or blink.

 _Will_ , Jack thought.

And then the walls rippled, ever-so-slightly. Though he had always been dull to such things, even Barbossa seemed to sense something. He lowered his hand and allowed Elizabeth to lift her head; her gaze was unsurprisingly fixed elsewhere than the treasure or the pirates threatening her. “Why not?” Barbossa asked, petulant as a child.

After everything else, it was almost a relief to feel the old, _human_ grudge stoke high in Jack’s chest, to swallow down an anger in his mouth that was all his own. But he showed none of that, and instead smiled, smiled, smiled his way to Barbossa’s side. Smiled as Barbossa choked on the thick flattery and sent his men out—though into the water was a sight that would stalk Jack’s darker dreams for nights to come—smiled as he delicately picked his way over the loose coins.

Smiles were unfairly discounted, in Jack’s opinion. All anyone looked or listened for was the rage and the scream.

“Such pretty little things. Nice metalwork.” He scooped up a handful of the Aztec coins and then flicked them back, all but the one.

The weight was slow to settle on him, and ringing in his head was the demand for the call, for the plea, but Jack pushed that card from himself. He would have his own revenge, and no one else’s mixed into it.

He confused them. Just enough for the smoke and the feathers to tangle in each other, and turn their eyes from the cave.

Standing to the side and under guard, Elizabeth at last shivered awake, a person instead of an inhabited statue. She slowly turned her head to look slantwise at Jack, and there was a wet veil over her eyes, like a carved-marble saint in the rain. If it was from thanks, she was offering it too soon.

“I underestimated you, Jack. You are a hard man to predict,” Barbossa said, swaggering about with not the slightest comprehension as to what it was really about. He had never had, and for a moment that made Jack feel pity for him.

Five some years of loyal service before gold had turned it all to ashes. It was worth a moment.

Jack had seen Elizabeth with a sword strapped to her side walking about like she knew how to use it, and so he hoped that that was a truth and not another illusion. He pattered on, rising to Barbossa’s jibe, and as he did he snatched the sword from one of the few pirates left.

She twisted and caught it, and she did indeed know how to use it. That seen to, Jack helped himself to a sword and set at Barbossa with the pent-up fury of nine long lonely years in the dark.

* * *

Will exploded into the cave and saved Jack the trouble of saving Elizabeth. The other man was a right wonder with a sword, and he had shaken off both his eerie languor and his half-crazed desperation to move like a _man_ , like one defending his own purpose in life. It looked like it was him wielding the sword, and not him plus more.

Barbossa drove Jack into another patch of moonlight and Jack went numb and bony again. But this time he could feel sickly-sweet burn seeping into the marrow of his bones, and he knew there was not much time. He hadn’t called the one but had taken advantage of the other, and he’d known it wouldn’t be too long before someone realized being suitable for one probably meant the same for the other.

Below, Will stumbled and cursed, just catching himself on the chest. Instead of twisting about and defending himself, he clung to the edge and stared glazed up at Jack, and only Elizabeth’s intervention kept his skull in one piece. He was feeling the strain, and true to his word, he was trying to pull it all upon himself.

Time to rush down and see an end to it while they were still themselves. Jack leaped a few piles of treasure, backhanding Barbossa into an angry following rush, and with the last turn he slivered his palm on his sword. Warm sticky blood welled up and wiped thick on the coin, which he then threw to Will.

Will caught it and stared at it, as if he’d never seen it before. He started to drop it in the chest, but froze as a roar, inaudible but very palpable, slammed through the cave.

Damn, Jack thought. But then Barbossa came at him and he had no choice but to draw the pistol on him. The weight was gone and now all Jack felt was black triumphant amusement slowly circling in for the final bloodletting.

“Will!” Elizabeth rushed across the ground.

“No,” Barbossa said, snapping out his own pistol at her. He turned a yellow grin on her, and though her stare back was hard and defiant, it lacked that cold blue cast it had had before.

One last time, Jack was given an offer. And one last time, he passed. He did not smile as he faced his fate—only his fate, made of his own choices—and pulled the trigger.

The smoke was blue and pungent, curling slowly sideways instead of upwards, as if nothing involved with Barbossa could travel straightly. He matched Jack’s smile. “A wasted shot—”

“No,” Will said, and they were both gasping and both bloody-mouthed.

But the blood dripping from Will’s lips was the bright red of an apple skin, and the blood trickling from one corner of Barbossa’s mouth was the black of pus. Slowly Barbossa began to totter, eyes never leaving Jack.

“Ah,” Barbossa whispered. “I turned you cold as I.”

Then he fell, a ragged unremarkable lump amid the brilliant glitter and gleam of his treasure. When Jack put his pistol back in his belt, he found that his hand was shaking. But it was his hand, and it had been his will moving it. What Barbossa had said was a lie, and Jack was sure of it.

He savoured the feeling. It was even closer to flying than a rum-spell could be.

* * *

Later, when they were rowing away, Will hesitantly glanced at Jack. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“They did what was best by them. It’s what anyone would do.” Though the near-grasp of the _Pearl_ was like a ragged hole in Jack’s chest. But he suspected that neither he nor the others were done yet. “So you’ve stopped confusing who I am?”

Elizabeth paused, letting her oar trail in the water. A tiny bit of spray leapt up to touch her cheek and she leaned into it, eyes fluttering half-closed. Then she opened them wide and stared at Will, who looked back speechless explanations and pleas for forgiveness. No, it was not over. Perhaps certain gods and curses had been laid to rest, but the marks they had left on the world lingered on.

“You’re not letting him be hung,” she finally said. It was not till her hand reluctantly lifted from the oar and wrapped around his wrist that Will replied.

He shook his head. “We need to talk once we’re aboard.”

Jack sat back, though he did raise a hand to point at Will. He grinned at how that raised Elizabeth’s hackles, for he had not been within a foot of touching the other man. “You might try wiping your face first. Commodore Norrington doesn’t seem like the kind who is fond of blood.”

“No,” Will said, voice thick. Once again Elizabeth stared at him, though she did not relinquish her grip on Will’s wrist.

No, it was not over. But when it was, and if it was in his favor, Jack told himself, he would search out a quetzal feather or bone and braid it into his hair. He needed to remember this.


	4. Sky Tears and Thunder (Tláloc)

A ship is a small world and its captain its god. So said some wise man, once upon a time.

James would not go so far, though it was true at least that the captain was the sinkhole toward which every activity within the ship, however small, inevitably spiraled. Good strong captains were ready for whatever came falling their way, while weak ones were justifiably caught off-guard. So he had believed, once upon a time.

Tonight he sat in his cabin, bloody bandage tight around his writing arm and quill in hand. The ink was rapidly drying upon the tip, yet he still did not know how to describe what had happened. Keeping the log demanded accuracy, truth free of fancy and qualifiers, and yet the truth of this night was in the fantastic and the scarcely believable—or what would be the scarcely believable, were there not wounded men groaning through the walls and above, the tired steady wet thump of the mop washing the blood off the decks.

He put quill to paper and found that the scratches he made wrote nothing, for the ink had dried. James dipped his pen again and listed the wounded and the dead. Then he stared at the precise thin black words and wondered that they did not burn through the book.

His arm pained him, but his head and heart pained him more.

* * *

The pirate was below in the brig, awaiting a judgment which no longer seemed certain and well-defined in James’ mind. And in the dark narrow passages of the ship, there were whispers.

Will, voice raspy and hurting. “I love you.”

It was an odd sensation that accompanied James’ hearing. A dull, spreading ache, like a bruise welling beneath the skin.

“I never should have taken it.” Elizabeth, sounding far older and bitter than her years and nature should have allowed. “God, Will, I love you, but—”

“You should marry him. He wasn’t a part of this. The farther you go from anything—anyone involved—the harder it’ll be for it to touch you again.”

There was a gasp from Elizabeth that drifted into the softest sigh and James could see clearly in the dark how Will must have so lightly touched her cheek, drawn his rough fingertips carefully over her delicate skin.

“I don’t know what’s coming to me now, and I don’t know whether I can keep it from you,” Will went on. His voice strengthened with desperation. The planks creaked as the pair of them clutched each other nearer to James. “I still _see_.”

“I know. I know. I had to pay her, and I didn’t understand then what she meant but now I think I do.” Elizabeth had tears in her voice, but they were already drying as if she had said her farewells and was now sinking into the dull haze of widowhood. Her tone James had heard so many times coming from the wives of his dead men, the bitter distant acceptance of those who knew too well that they were overmatched by life.

He abruptly remembered the little girl who’d sung to the Caribbean fog, the high piping defiant voice.

Through the walls came a low long groan, and then a muffled shriek. They had been two hours under sail and still the surgeon plied his trade, and still James’ entry in the log remained no more than a bare list of casualties without rhyme or reason to it. Part of him thought that that was more fitting than any words he could produce, but he knew his duty. He hoped.

Beyond him were the harsh, rough sounds of a stolen embrace, and suddenly the burn in his chest worsened. He raised his hand to steady himself against the walls, but a swell of the sea sent it careening against some overhanging thing that clattered.

All sound ceased.

Then, very dimly, James thought he heard the rumble of thunder.

* * *

Elizabeth looked well, save for her wise-worn eyes. Those seemed to have sunk deeper into her face, and sometimes when she turned sideways to James, the flicker of light and shadow painted her brown and wrinkled…but still not unbeautiful. Her hands remained slender and graceful as they adjusted the lanterns, their white gleaming bluish instead of the expected warm red and yellow.

“I believe before all of this started, you were planning to present me with a proposal. I accept it, and I’m certain that my father will approve.” No trace of indecision lingered in her voice, but her finger slipped on the knob of the second lantern. It threw its light wide and high, changing the dark brown of her eyes into an eerie deep black-blue surrounded by glowing white, like the sea at night.

“That’s…rather impetuous of you. I never finished making it, so you couldn’t possibly know the substance of it.” But beautiful as she was, James would have had her as she had been before. At least then he could have been sure that he spoke to a real woman, and not some phantom of the moonlight. He had had enough of…of that. Though to his red-cheeked shame, he still could not bring himself to put concrete words to it.

She shrugged and rested her hands on the table, standing across from him. “I thought you would have learned to expect that from me.”

“Impetuosity, yes. But not…not…Elizabeth, I would be honored if you became my wife, but I would be dishonored and damned if I took you from some…prior claim on your attentions,” James said. The heat of the light on his face made the sweat rise and gather beneath his wig. An itch began to crawl along his hairline and over the back of his neck.

Elizabeth glanced down at her hands and smiled, almost rueful. “You’re a good man, Commodore Norrington, but you haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Then tell me. Tell me what I don’t—what were those pirates before they began to die, and what was your connection to Jack Sparrow. Tell me what you and Will and that pirate were doing while my men were dying.” The temper rose in James’ voice and cracked out his words. Immediately afterward he was sorry for it, but he saw that while the sting had laid deep into Elizabeth, it had not cut her down.

Instead she lifted her head and came round the table, and the press of her clenched fist against the corner turned her knuckles chill white as her eyes were angry black. A hectic flush had risen in her cheeks. “I was a silly fool, and Will a gallant one, and now we’re both paying for it. You saw those pirates—we laid them to rest, and it cost him his peace of mind and it cost me my girlhood.”

Then she fell silent, only her eyes moving to search his face. They lingered on the sick fear rising in James.

After a moment, Elizabeth turned her back to him and faced the ocean beyond the window. “No, don’t blame Will or Jack Sparrow for that. They had nothing—men had nothing to do with it. If you want frankness, then I will be frank with you. I would not come to the altar a maiden. I may not be able—I may not be able to bear you children. I don’t know. Her price might not include that.”

“She?” James echoed, trying to make sense of it.

Outside the wind rose and it flung in a fresh sharp smell of rotten salt, a reminder of the vast waters that lay beyond the frail wood of the ship. It was raining, James thought. He could hear the soft pattering, nearly a whisper.

“But I would be a good wife to you, I think.” Elizabeth leaned forward to place her hands on the sill of the window. When she bowed her head, her hair streamed in rivers of gold and brass and carnelian down her back, as if she had been transformed into some pagan idol. But her voice was indisputably human. “It would be a favor you’d do me, James.”

“And what of Will? What bargain are you making? I’ve already said that he won’t be charged—he was clearly a prisoner—” James stopped, for Elizabeth was laughing. Softly, beneath her breath, and not at all in happiness.

She eventually ceased, and once again began to stare at the water. “I’m done with bargaining. I only ask you, James. _Please_.”

In the end, he left her. He shied from the line of her back and the tresses of her hair, and he told her he would come to see her again when she was in better spirits. Somehow, though she still had not turned, he thought she had smiled at that, and shed a few tears. He could almost taste the tang on his tongue.

* * *

Will looked terrible and terrifying, pale and gaunt like a worm-eaten ivory idol tossed up on the shore. He leaned against the bars of the cell across from Jack’s and spat fury. “You let him send his men out to the ship. Jack, we didn’t even warn them—”

“And rightly not, for they would’ve called you worse than sick.” The pirate was little more than a swaying shadow that occasionally brushed over Will, but nevertheless there was a familiarity that soured in James’ mouth.

He bent down to check on the guard posted at the end of the brig, felt a slight snore whuff his hand, and was both surprised and angered that someone on the ship could still find sleep so easily. But then James bent nearer and heard to the unnaturally slow breath of the guard.

“I’ve done what I needed to, and you’ve done what you’ve needed to, and Elizabeth did what she needed to. So we’ve all excused ourselves by calling on expedience and can hardly point fingers, Will.” First one hand and then the other threaded its way through the bars, as if Sparrow were lounging against them. His effortless, unruffled certainty grated on James. “But I suppose I’d understand if you’re changing your mind. Wouldn’t be well for the fiancé of the governor’s daughter to have any blots in his past.”

“I’m not marrying her.” Eyes closed, Will let his head fall back against the bars. His hands clasped each other before him, squeezing and twisting and finally locking on his wrists.

Jack’s many baubles jingled as he straightened. “No?”

It was a long time before Will answered, and when he did, he used the same exhausted, too-knowing tone as Elizabeth. “So many men have died down here…only a month ago, there was one dead of infection and broken spirit in your cell. I can see him snarling over your shoulder.”

James stiffened and felt himself turn cold, first at tips of fingers and nose and then rapidly spreading inward. Because that was true, and because they had dumped the pirate’s body at sea and because even if Will had learned of it from the gossip, there was no way he could have known which cell.

When Jack answered, the flippancy had been stripped from his tone to leave bare a harder, hotter core. “Just as well I can’t see him, then. Who were you seeing instead of me on the beach, William Turner?”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? They aren’t here now. I am.” Suddenly Will pushed off the bars and across the passage to grab the bars above Jack’s hands. “And I love Elizabeth but when I touch her I feel her ghosts and I know she can see mine in my eyes. I’ll not marry her to that. We’d haunt each other to an early death.”

“Are you making me a proposal, then?” The slim brown hand flipped over, slow, and splayed its fingers to almost graze Will’s cheek. Jack shifted and Will shifted back, but only a little.

James found he was praying hard for Will to reply.

But when Will did not, Jack did. His fingertips traced over Will’s hair while the other man stared at something dully horrible in Jack’s cell. “Then I’ll make one. I liked what I saw of _you_ , Will. And I’ll wager that I can help you show me more of that.”

His hand darted forward, quick as a snake-strike, and twisted in Will’s hair. One moment Will was against the bars, and the next he had ripped himself away. His face seemed chalked onto the damp darkness, and he lifted a hand to his mouth to wipe away drops of something. “You don’t know who you’re asking.”

“Oh, but I think I do. Even if you don’t, yet. Been a while since you’ve been alone, hasn’t it?” Strangely enough, Jack sounded as if he meant it kindly, but his words only made Will stumble the quicker away.

If he was to do any thinking and map a way through his confusion, James should have withdrawn without leaving notice of his presence. But instead he stayed, and he lifted his hands so when Will fell heavy against him, he could catch the other man.

* * *

In the light of dawn Will looked no better. He slumped in the chair and stared up at James with near-mocking drained eyes and lips still flecked with the blood he had coughed up while James had dragged him back to the captain’s cabin.

“And that is what you expect me to believe,” James said, one hand bracing himself against the rock of the ship and the other pressed hard to his forehead. The clarity of the sunlight now streaming in both shocked and hurt him; the greyness of a cloudy day would have been easier to bear. “A curse and unkillable pirates…”

“Formerly unkillable. And no, I don’t expect you to believe anything.” Will lifted his palm and stared at it, as if reading the lines.

“Especially that you and Elizabeth would cleave from each other now, after she’s risked life and virtue to save you. After such adventures, I hardly—”

The grip around James’ wrist was iron, and shaking, and the look in Will’s eyes flashed mad and red as the sun over a battlefield. But then it faded to show fear and worry, and those were directed, oddly enough, at James.

“I missed your lessons,” Will said. He drew James closer, then released him and leaned back. Now his face was more akin to the old men of the town, who sat on their porches and sadly watched the world that had moved beyond them. “She would do better at your side than mine.”

“Are you planning to help Sparrow escape and to flee with him?” James reached for Will, glimpsed something in Will’s palm and seized it. He turned it over to see a wicked scar grinning up at him. “What is this…some pirate’s mark he’s put on you?”

Then Will was on his feet and pushing back James, mouth set in a grim line. “No. This has little to do with Jack Sparrow, except that possibly he’s the only one who isn’t a fool. Take care of Elizabeth, commodore.”

“James.” The correction came awkwardly and thickly off of James’ tongue. He still held Will by the scarred palm and as he drew them sharply together, he thought he felt the burnt skull twist, bite at his thumb.

Will was sweet and bitter, struggling then yielding then matching. He had still been a boy when James had ended their contact, feeling the pressure of responsibility and rank and also resisting the urge to see Will as something else, but now it was impossible to deny that Will had grown into a man. And that James had wanted, did want this press of Will’s body against his own and the uneven tender-hard play of their lips against each other. He grew dizzy, tasting lightning. And for the briefest moments, he thought he touched the very edge of a different world.

But then Will broke them apart. His eyes glittered wet, and his lips were twisted into a grotesque half-smile. “James. Believe me when I tell you that you want no part of this—that I haven’t told you half the truth.”

He raised his marked hand towards the mirror on the wall and it dulled, blackened. At first James thought it was tarnish at an impossible speed, but then he saw the wavering and he realized it was smoke. Some face danced behind it, so gruesome and furious that James took a step back before he realized.

There was no fire for the mirror to be reflecting. And Will had gone.

When James looked back at the mirror, he saw that it was clear silvered glass once more.

* * *

What arrangements Will and Elizabeth had made, James never knew and never bothered to find out. He had reeled from the glimpse of truth and had sought refuge in the old order, the comforting routine of putting to port and repairing and restocking.

After the funerals of his men who had been killed, he had nightmares. And on the night before Jack Sparrow’s hanging, James made no attempt to seek sleep but instead paced back and forth all night, trying to decide to whom to speak. At last he decided to try resting, but a chance glance out the window showed him a red dawn.

In the morning, Elizabeth and her father met him halfway to the gallows. She offered him her arm and he took it, both warmed by the whiteness of her smile and alarmed at how wan it was.

“As you can see, I am better.” She lifted her chin into the bright sunlight and gazed upon the men on the gallows as if they were the whitecaps of the sea. Her hand was an ephemeral thing, barely palpable on James’ arm, and her voice was both melodious and hollow, like the echo of the ocean in a conch-shell.

Below the hangman had neared the midpoint of his recitation of Jack Sparrow’s crimes. The pirate himself looked calm, uncaring, as if he knew something that no one else did. It was entirely possible he did, for alone of the players in the moonlit nightmare, he seemed unscathed.

“I thought you had some fondness for Sparrow. According to W—Mr. Turner, he provided some aid to you.” James was aware that his envy of the man was spinning his voice tight and tense, and he castigated himself for it.

But Elizabeth seemed untouched by the harsh twang and deep cut of his words. “We all earn our due and Jack is no exception. Nor do I believe he would wish to be.”

The recital ended, the hangman was stepping towards Jack with the noose hanging between his hands. And in the crowd there was a commotion headed by Will, his dress somber and spare but for the sharp silver sword strapped to his side. He nodded to the Governor, who was stiff in his surprise, and then he turned to Elizabeth. His eyes flicked from her to James and then back to her, and she straightened beside James like a diver preparing to launch.

“Whatever wrongs I may have done you, please forgive me for them. For I do and will always love you,” Will said, eyes fixed on Elizabeth. He bowed. “From the moment we met.”

Then he was gone, slipped into the crowd quicker and more quietly than smoke spiraling into nothing. By the wall something red and yellow flickered—a jaunty-garbed parrot, but for some reason James felt a chill upon glimpsing it.

Elizabeth stayed in profile to James, but he could see a thin, wet-blue film spread over her eyes. Behind them both her father was exclaiming and muttering his way through the implications of Will’s words, and before them—

\--silver flashed at the gallows and Elizabeth gasped. Delicate as a flower, she wilted. But when James caught her and strove to stand her back on her feet, her grip holding him down was stronger than iron.

“Is this your choice?” he hissed, just before laying her down and ripping himself away to chase Will and Sparrow. He thought he had guessed it.

* * *

James’ heart was in his throat and so he could not speak the order to hold fire. Elizabeth signaled it for him, sliding before the bayonets with her arms outstretched.

“Elizabeth!” her father exclaimed.

“Father, I’m sorry.” But she did not waver as she took first one step back and then another and another, shielding Will and Jack. Because James still could not speak, the soldiers advanced as she retreated until they were standing on the edge of the cliffs.

Over her shoulder the pirate’s black eyes gleamed with mayhem and madness and, startlingly enough, a trace of melancholy. He tipped his fingers at James. “I was rooting for you, commodore. Better the law than the divine, so they say.”

And then he was gone, fluttering sash all that James saw as Jack flung himself over the walls.

“Elizabeth?” Governor Swann repeated, a plea in his voice.

Her chin jerked down, but only for a moment because then Will was embracing her from behind, hands on her waist and face hidden in the fairness of her neck. He whispered something, sighed perhaps, and then withdrew to meet James’ eyes. And his gaze said a few last words to James as well, though James had not the wisdom to decipher their meaning.

A second later Will was gone as well, and Elizabeth was lowering her arms to stand unprotected and unregretful before them. “This is my choice,” she said, steadily and softly.

Then she took a step forward, and held out her hand to James.

Why he took it, he was never quite certain. It was because he did love her somehow, though he could not fathom the shadows that shaded so much of her now and he was blinded by the parts of her that were not in shadow. And because she needed him, and perhaps because he thought something of Will lingered on the curve of her throat. And perhaps…because the rattling of the drum still echoed in his ears, only muffled so it resembled the sound of the rain that was so like human speech.

* * *

They married. On their wedding night, in the sanctity of their bed chamber, he carefully gathered her to him and felt real fear shiver her body. Her hands moved uncertainly over his body and the dark blanks in her knowledge made her eyes like gaping wounds. But when he parted her legs and slipped within her folds, he found that she had not lied about that.

Much later in the night, he woke to find the bed empty and Elizabeth standing with one hand on the windowpane. It had been sunny for the vows, but now a light drizzle stirred the darkness.

Near dawn, he heard her wake and turn to look at him, standing at the half-open window so the light drops struck his face. Neither of them called to the other.

* * *

Once a month, Elizabeth rose far earlier than was her wont. She took up a basket of the bandages she had used to soak away her monthly courses and she washed them out in the sea.

James was not supposed to know of such things, but nevertheless he had learned. He overheard the whispers.

He did not realize for a long time that not all of them came from people. Matters of state preoccupied him, kept him long aboard his ships where there was little time to spend on speculation. Elizabeth proved her word and was an excellent wife to him, running household and society with a firm hand and a light laugh and a calm face. She was genuinely warm with him, he came to believe, and he in turn held her in higher regard than almost anything else. But if James found himself less reluctant than expected to attend to his duties away from Port Royal, he could not pretend it was not true. She was an excellent wife, but she was not, in the end, a great love.

If there was fault to be found in that, it lay on both sides. Perhaps three sides, or even four.

Occasionally information would blow in from far outposts, bits of news would stray across James’ desk, rumors would make his hands wander when he strove to mark positions on his maps. Sparrow had been sighted in this port, a strange occurrence had stirred that town. The odd sailor bearing too fine a sword for his appearance would pass through Port Royal. It would rain and, reading late in the library, James would look up and almost think he had heard a cry of welcome.

Sometimes he grew frustrated and angry wondering why _he_ had not also been offered a choice. But then he would take his seat across from Elizabeth at the breakfast table, and he would see the way blue-purple veins strained beneath her always-blanched skin, and James would know that he would have taken the sure, the tried-and-true way. The way of least hurt.

Sometimes he wished he could help.

* * *

One night he was ashore and alone, Elizabeth having gone to visit with her ailing father in the mansion up the hill. Outside it was black and storming, and inside James stood in the library, hand on the window-latch. He would be a fool to lift it, but there seemed to be voices in the drumming rain and they wanted entry.

There was a face. James exclaimed, threw himself backward against a chair, and on the other side of the glass Will pressed his hand to the pane. He opened it somehow and pushed into the room, so wet that his hair and clothes made him like a great seal rising from the ocean, like the vague memories of selkies James had from the Irish maid in the household of his childhood.

“You’ve been calling,” Will said. He reached behind himself and closed the windows, then stood dripping on the carpet. Life sparked his eyes and crowded out most of the gauntness that had afflicted him the last time James had seen him, but enough remained to carve his face into a portrait out of an illuminated text.

“Have I?” The pressure of James’ fingers on Will’s wet sleeve turned the dripping into thready rivulets. “Who else does?”

Instead of answering him, Will leaned close and rested his lips against the corner of James’ mouth. He paused, then moved them a fraction. When Will paused again, James took Will’s head in his hands and turned them so their mouths fully met.

The fire went out, James remembered. It went out in a flare and a billow of smoke so large that some of it drifted into the room to be taken up by him in great gasping breaths, and the air cooled. Will was cool as well, his legs slippery and chilly, his neck like wet ice against James’ mouth. But he warmed under James’ hands, lips, tongue, and when he was wrapped about James he was flush-faced and burning, and all James saw in Will’s eyes was himself.

When they had coupled and were lying sated on the rug, James pulled at Will’s hand until he had turned it over to see the scar, still as sharp as the day the coin had apparently burnt it. He traced the edge with a finger and the shadows of the room darted out claws.

Will shivered, curled away from James and tried to withdraw his hand. But James held it, and finally the other man ceased trying.

“You see Elizabeth,” James said.

“When I can.” For a long moment Will’s eyes picked signs from James’ face, judged and weighed them. “Sometimes the sea calls her to it and I have to stay away because it won’t abide me then. Sometimes nothing calls her and then I have to stay away because I might bring something that would steal her from herself.”

It made a sense that James only half-recognized. If he closed his eyes and listened to the rain a little longer, he would root out all the meaning, but he did not. There were many nights when the falling water whispered, and so far only one where Will had appeared. “You travel with Jack Sparrow.”

“I do. The night is usually quiet around him. I can sleep.” Will stretched out his hand and touched dampness on James’ face. Sweat or rain, James couldn’t remember and couldn’t tell. “You weren’t part of it, but you’ve something after all…still, if I stayed more than a night you would have more, and worse, than in your most terrible nightmare.”

“It isn’t a night yet,” James whispered. He ran his hand up Will’s arm and down Will’s back to pull the other man to him, hoping Will would come.

And he did. But in the morning, he was gone.

* * *

Elizabeth looked at James once and knew, and he looked at her once and he felt the brief flash of jealousy that slipped from him to her and back. But then she put her hand in his and turned them to face the ocean.

“If I had written our lives, it would have gone differently,” she said. “Perhaps it would have been worse.”

“Perhaps it would have been better. But never mind it—we are writing them now.” James lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Tell me, Elizabeth. I won’t stay out with my eyes closed any longer.”

She drew a long, shivering breath that seemed to echo in the shuddering white of the foam across the sea. Her fingers tightened on his own, and slowly, she began to tell the story from its beginning in fog and fire and furious blood, not leaving out anything.

He believed all of it.


End file.
